On Empty Graves
by guineapiggie
Summary: Becca Barnes has not spoken her brother's name in two years, and carries his cryptic last letter in her purse in the vague hope that it all might make some kind of sense at some point. [Rated T for language and allusions to dark themes]


**On Empty Graves**

 **DISCLAIMER:** I don't own a thing, this text was written for the purpose of entertainment only.

* * *

 _[Italy, 1944_ ]

 _I love you, Bucky,_ he hears his sister say, and thinks _what would she say now_? He watches the water swirl down the drain bright pink with blood, and wonders.

He doesn't deserve his sweet sister's love anymore, he concludes numbly.

He writes a letter that night, a confused mess of words, to be more precise. He never plans to send it.

(When Bucky falls, Steve finds the letter, and in the helplessness of his grief can neither bear to keep it nor throw it away, and ends up pressing it into Buck's little sister's shaking hands.)

 _Dear Becca,_

I _'m writing to tell you that I am still alive, but to tell you the truth, sis, I'm not so sure. Quite honestly, I don't think I'm coming back. There's a part of me that wants to so bad - I miss you so much I can't sleep - but there's a part of me that never got saved so I don't think I'll come home._

 _Don't cry, Becca, you never cry. This goddamn fucking war, it got me already, don't let it change you, too._

 _Mum says you wanna work at the hospital. Listen, the men there, they're like me, they look like they're people but they never really came home. Don't smile at them, they're dangerous. Whatever you do, you be careful around these lads._

 _Becca, you tell everyone, I miss you, I love you, I'm sorry -_

* * *

 _[Brooklyn, 1946_ ]

She shows the letter to one of her patients, two years later. Sergeant O'Riley looks at the letter and sighs a little. "Who wrote this?" he asks after a long time.

"My brother," she says softly, and shows him a picture. _Bucky_ , she thinks, and doesn't say it.

It's a good picture, taken before the war, by Steve, probably, seeing as he's not _on_ the picture, and Steve was never far. He wasn't far in the end, not even then. Followed his friend into death, just two months later, as everyone had always thought he would. Becca thinks, secretly, that it was better that way - she can't bring herself to picture one without the other.

"A sergeant," O'Riley says, somewhat approvingly, nods slowly. Takes in the picture. Becca thinks she can see his eyes water - Bucky's picture does that. He was so young, and handsome as the devil.

O'Riley reminds her of him, in a strange way - maybe because he had the same rank; his hair is greying but it might have once been the same colour, and his eyes are green, not blue, but they're bright and quick like Bucky's were. (And there's a sadness in them she thinks Bucky might've brought home, too, had he -)

The sergeant looks sad now, really sad, when he smiles up at her. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Barnes," he says, very earnestly, "and I am very sorry for your loss. But you shouldn't ask me about this. You won't like what I have to say."

"It's been two years, sir," she says softly. "I've had condolences from his superior agent, Miss Carter, and from his comrades, all of them, and from his best friend. I've heard enough _sorry for your loss-_ es. I can take it."

He sighs deeply and motions to the picture. "That smile, Miss. Smiles like that, they wiped 'em off over there. You would've never seen your brother's smile again." His eyes go very dark. "Looking at the lads that I brought back, Miss... You put flowers on his grave and remember that smile the way it was and start trying to accept that it's better this way, in the end."

Becca realises, in this moment, that two years are not nearly long enough to hear these truths.

Her eyes burn.

"We buried an empty coffin," she tells him, in a quiet, hard voice, and doesn't know why she tells him that. "They never found my brother. Never found his best friend, either. There's nothing in that fucking grave."

She doesn't set foot into his room ever again, and by the time she realises he might have been right, Sergeant O'Riley has passed away.

They buried O'Riley in the same graveyard, it's pretty, peaceful, but she's been there too often, and in the snow and the quiet it looks sad, almost haunted.

She puts down a flower, a white rose, wants to say something but doesn't know what. Nobody else seems to visit this grave, and she feels incredibly guilty for abandoning the elderly Sergeant, and for something he'd warned her not to ask him, too. She cries a few hot tears for that bitter, kind man that melt small ditches into the untouched snow on his grave.

She lays down the rest of her roses into the snow underneath that tragically familiar grey headstone, _James B. Barnes, SSA Sergeant, beloved brother and son, MIA._

It always makes her dizzy, that it says _missin in action_ , not _killed in action_ ; and the snow in front of his gravestone where her flowers lie looks rocky and trampled like she always pictures the Austrian Alps, where he _fell_ -

Her face is warm with tears and it's such a pain to speak, but she forces a smile on her lips and croaks "Hey Buck," and it sounds pitiful and stupid but in two and a half years, it is the first time she speaks his name.

* * *

On the picture in her purse, her big brother's radiant smile is conserved.

It's not much, but maybe it can be enough to hold on to, someday.

* * *

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